My 2020 in Gaming

Even in a year of pandemic, there was gaming. I probably played as often as I did in normal times, but fewer titles and with fewer people. I did not attend any conventions; I tried, signed up for online cons, but it didn’t pan out for me.

I played a total of 20 different titles, the lowest number in six years; this included only 3 board games, 14 role-playing games, and 3 story games. Only 6 of these (30%) were new to me, i.e., I had never played them before, including one playtest. The board games were sadly curtailed because my husband has been wrestling with vision problems that made it frustrating for him to deal with small writing and game components.

But I still played at least once weekly thanks to a variety of recurring RPG campaigns conducted online. Frankly, I had not had this much satisfying long-term role-playing in years: with few options for leisure and social activities, many more people could be counted on to meet regularly.

With six years of data, here is what the game type breakdown looks like:

For the last five years I’ve also been keeping track of who I play with. It looks like this:

Player diversity was disappointing in 2020, particularly when I was a player in other people’s games. The majority of players who were not cis men were players in games I or my husband ran, and somehow I did not play with any people of colour (that I am aware of), a sad performance. Despite this, I think it’s not too bad that I played with 41 different people.

Here is what my list of games looked like in 2020:

Post, Dammit!

I’ve been trying to blog for months now. My admin board is littered with false starts, posts I started writing and never finished. It’s clear that I don’t have the energy, inspiration, and/or time to produce long posts anymore. So I’m going to attempt a return to shorter but more frequent blurbs, including actually posting back-dated earlier attempts so I have at least something. Why? Because in order to write professionally and regularly, I need to write more consistently. So here goes; a bunch of unconnected dots will slowly appear.

Confinement Days

So far, 2020 has been scary and draining. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we have been under a shelter-in-place order for eight weeks, and I miss seeing my friends.

On the other hand, like most people I’ve been trying to reach out to distant friends through calls and, in our case, online games.

A lovely receptacle for chardonnay

My 2019 in Gaming

I’ve been neglecting my blog for all sorts of reasons I don’t want to get into right now, but it’s a new year and time for a fresh start. It’s time to once again look at the games I played in the year that just ended, and see if I accomplished some of my goals.

I played a total of 36, up from last year’s low of 29; this included 14 tactical and strategic games (board, card, and miniatures games), and 22 narrative game (role-playing games, story games, live-action role-playing). Some 23 of these (64%) were new to me, i.e., I had never played them before, including 7 playtests (19% of the total). But there were several repeat games thanks to a few recurring campaigns, particularly 13th Age, Agon 2e (playtest), Dragon Age, Journey Away, and Paladin, as well as perennial favourite Spirit Island.

With five years of data, here is what the breakdown looks like:

For the last four years I’ve also been keeping track of who I play with. It looks like this:

I have been trying to play with more new and diverse people, and that seems to be working, although there is room for improvement.

Here is what my list of games looked like in 2019:

You are here ⬇️

We’re still unpacking boxes and putting things away, but it’s beginning to look more like a home and less like a flea market. This afternoon I posted a photo on Twitter showing the portion of the den that looks habitable, and I started thinking what great big geeks it shows us to be.

But then it also dawned on me that it shows lots of connections to the people in my life, my friends, from the mementos Edmund and I have given each other, to furniture items we got from local friends, to games and art created by people I know online and sometimes in real space, to presents we’ve received, and games we played with great people. So I marked up the picture to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

Thank you, friends, for being in my life!

We’re moving – but where?

You know how we have been struggling in the past year. We had hoped to be able to sublet the main house area and live in the in-law unit; this project dragged on with one hurdle after another until we finally learned that although our friend and landlord was willing to accommodate this arrangement, it is illegal where we live (not permitted by the zoning code). Now we have to leave by the end of May.

We don’t really know where we’ll end up; it’s too expensive in the Bay Area, so we are looking at rural California (Humboldt County), Portland OR, Vancouver BC, and other less expensive places. We’re also looking at shared housing programs.

To be honest, homelessness is on the list of possibilities and pretty darn near the top. We have used up the finances raised for us by our friends on GoFundMe, all our savings, and all our retirement funds. We both have health challenges, physical and mental. My energy level is low, I have not managed to work full-time since my bout with cancer. And we have two cats, which always makes it trickier to find housing.

But since we let our local friends know a few days ago, we have also received offers of help to find a new place, get employment and move, invitations for temporary stays while we search, and so forth. We are poor in money, but rich in friends. As soon as we get back to a sustainable living situation, I will be satisfied; I don’t need more. I love you all.

Marie Targer

Mitochondries, Filles du Roi et Huguenots

Scroll down for the English section of this post.

L’ADN mitochondrial, dont on se sert pour tracer les migrations humaines, se transmet pratiquement inchangé de mère en fille, excepté quelques rares mutations. J’ai donc la même formulation, le même ADNmt que mes aïeules de lignée maternelle: ma mère, sa mère, et ainsi de suite.

Quand je remonte cette chaîne, la première à vivre en Nouvelle-France est Marie Targer, venue de La Rochelle.

G+ Exodus

Rolling the social media dice…

As Google turns off the lights on Google+, looking for a new place to hang on social media increasingly feels like shopping for clothes. You know how men’s shopping is generally simpler because they just need to make sure they pick the right type, size, and colour, while women also have to deal with unreliable size information, poorly made items, low-quality materials, and whether the damn thing will have pockets? Unlike clothes, social media are not built differently for women; instead, they are built for cis het white tech bros under the pretense that one size fits all.

If he’s in the target demographics, even the most ally of allies can find a replacement home without too much trouble. There are several options and the questions boil down to: “Do they have the feature and interface I find most comfortable?” and “Are a good number of my friends going to be there?”

If you’re a woman and/or from a numbers of marginalized communities (people of colour, of different gender or orientation, disabled, etc.), it’s probably not that simple. And the more your identities differ from peak privilege, the more difficult it is to rebuild a social media network in a new spot. Your privacy, safety, and security are much more threatened, and it’s much more likely to see your friends and peers vanish in the exodus.

On G+, I had built a geek and STEM network of over 400 women, enby, and other people who do not identify as cis men. I’m about to loose at least 85% of it

Gillette Banne

Au meurtre!

Scroll down for the English section of this post.

La première femme d’origine française exécutée pour meurtre en Nouvelle-France, Gillette Banne, est ma neuvième arrière-grand-mère du côté de ma grand-mère maternelle:

Banne, Gillette [décaïeule ou 9x arrière-grand-mère]
mère de Bertault, Élisabeth Thérèse Isabelle [nonaïeule ou 8x arrière-grand-mère]
mère de Laurence, Nicolas [octaïeul ou 7x arrière-grand-père]
père de Laurence, Jean-Baptiste [septaïeul ou 6x arrière-grand-père]
père de Laurence, Jean-Baptiste [sextaïeul ou 5x arrière-grand-père]
père de Laurence, Joseph [quincaïeul ou 4x arrière-grand-père]
père de Laurence, Joseph [quartaïeul ou 3x arrière-grand-père]
père de Laurence, Grégoire [trisaïeul ou arrière-arrière-grand-père]
père de Laurence, Mathias [bisaïeul ou arrière-grand-père]
père de *** [aïeule ou grand-mère]
mère de *** [mère]
mère de Lagacé, Sophie